Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen

Born in 1953, Indrani Aikath grew up in a well-to-do family in Bihar. Her family sent her to study abroad in Columbia University. She married when she returned to India, but the marriage lasted only briefly. She was famously witty and clever, had many admirers, and her second marriage was to Soman Gyaltsen, a teaplanter of Tibetan origin. They lived in Darjeeling in tea-estate style: miles from their neighbours, dinners at the tea planters clubs, their only child studying at a boarding school.

She started writing during this period of her life, when she described herself as being "thoroughly bored" by the life of a tea-planter's wife. Khushwant Singh was an early admirer of her work and encouraged her to continue working on her first novel. "Daughters of the House" came out in 1991 and received strong critical reviews. Her second novel, "Crane's Morning", was published two years later, also to critical acclaim, and earned her a 10-book contract from Penguin.

Hr father's death in 1993 led to a property dispute between her mother, her sister, and herself. She moved into a floor of the y house to ensure her claim on the property, with her mother and sister living on another floor. They discovered her collapsed on the bedroom floor and called a local doctor. She sank into a coma and died the next day. Concerns arose about the nature of her death and the treatment, and a police case was filed by her husband. Khushwant Singh also supported an investigation.

Meanwhile, a few months after Crane's Morning was published, an astute reader noticed startling similarities between the novel and The Rosemary Tree, a novel by Elizabeth Gouge. Plagiarism was confirmed and the book withdrawn. Her last novel, Hold my Hand, I'm dying, was published posthumously.